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Do you care about historical accuracy when watching a movie?

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5 hours ago
#1

Offline
Dec 2013
15425
I think gladiator 2 is a pretty good movie, even better than the first one. I enjoyed it very much. I saw lots of critiques that gladiator 2 movie gives historical inaccuracies, especially for the character Macrinus (Denzel Washington), thus giving the movie a low score. But really, I don't give a damn about historical accuracy when watching movies. If it gives lots of enjoyment when watching it such as Gladiator 2, then it easily become a great movie for me, in fact it is one of my favorite movies in these past 2 years next to Alien Romulus.

A movie can be historically accurate perhaps such as Oppenheimer, but I think it is definitely the worst movie I have ever watched in my life I wanted to run away from it when waiting it for 3+ hours to end. My sacrum hurts so much waiting it to end in theater even watching it on theater's bed. The movie really feels like torturing Wikipedia historical pages but with sound. Yuck..

What is your opinion in this matter?


5 hours ago
#2

Offline
Feb 2020
7097
Yes! too much.
Happens all the time in Dinosaur movies that I love to watch, as everyone seems to think that synapsids like Dimetrodon either are Dinosaurs or existed in the same time periods as them, both massively wrong. Toy companies are just as guilty as them though when it comes to sneaking Dimetrodon into bags of Dinosaurs. I just don't get this obsession they have with it😂

And don't even get me started on 10,000 BC. I didn't know wether to laugh or cry at that one.
3 hours ago
#3

Offline
Oct 2017
2813
I have yet to watch Gladiator 2.

It depends what is the target audience and what is the genre, I won't care about historical accuracy when watching something like Tropic Thunder or any comedy, but historical accuracy is important for me in war and mobster movies.

Some war and mobster movies that I praise for the historical accuracy, although it's impossible to be 100% perfect in any movie:

- Stalingrad (1993) — Perfect
- A Bridge Too Far — Some inaccuracies regarding the German command decisions and quotes but it's passable.
- Once Upon a Time in America — Depicts mobsters as what they are, despicable horrendous criminals.
- Patton — Some historical innacuracies but passable.
- Zulu — Perfect
- Das Boot — Perfect
- Tombstone 1993 — Perhaps one of the only cowboy movies that is accurate despite some inaccuracies regarding Jhonny Ringo's fate.


Some movies that I despise for historical accuracy:

- Saving Private Ryan — I know it's fiction but holy sh* they couldn't make anything accurate besides the uniforms and guns which is the basic stuff, anything from the timber posts at the beach being placed in the wrong direction to the high command ordering a group of 7 soldiers into enemy territory in order to find one man, then we got the MG42 holding fire for 10 seconds and no barrel meltdowns/changes, the action is good and I praise it for that but anything else is just garbage. ''Upham! Upham!''.

-Stalingra 2013 — Throw in the dumpster fire.

-Enemy at the Gates — I don't know where even to begin just throw in the dumpster fire.

- Donnie Brasco — A good movie but very inaccurate, firstly is that Lefty never got killed because he vouched for Donnie, I know that the movie never shows him getting killed but implies it as he removed all of his jewelry which is a sign that a mobster knows that he would get killed, also the entire Donnie Brasco thing was never all about lefty, the movie failed to explore Donnie's and Sonny Black relationship which was the focal point on his infiltration, Sonny Black had Donnie almost as a son and was the only person who got whacked because of him.

-Every Western movie ever has many inaccuracies.
''Enemies' gifts are no gifts and do no good.''
3 hours ago
#4

Offline
Jul 2012
7945
I think it depends on the source material. If it is a romanticized version of a time period like Queens Gambit or something I do not need it to be entirely accurate. If someone that lived back then were like " I guess that could have happened but probably not". I do not want like something that had a 0% chance of occurring just for more views or action.
3 hours ago
#5

Offline
Dec 2015
8324
It depends. Because it is related to my profession I will always take a look on that but it depends on the movie.

If it's a movie inspired by a history than I make 2 separate opinions/ratings, first one is just the movie and putting aside history. Second is historical accuracy. As you've mentioned Gladiator II, for me it was a decent movie. Horrible historical depiction, the first movie wasn't even that close with mistakes.
If it's a doccumentary than I am full on focused on historical accuracy after all it should be a doccumentary, such as this bs netflix cleopatra... [Haven't seen cause I knew already that it is not worth the time]

I usually appreciate if the movie staff pays more attention into details, as there will be always some mistakes but it is good to see some homework been done, a good example of that is All Quiet on the Western Front, even with it's mistakes it has tried a lot to show how it was. Aswell as with Alexander from 2004 showing the battle of Gaugamela based on historical resources [even tho it still had other mistakes]. Or also I did like a lot the approach for Barbarians season 1 [Haven't seen 2nd], to make Romans speak in Latin and German tribes speaking in German.
Still waiting for a movie with more realistic approach to melee combat and how it should look like or battles as that's the most lacking. As so far outside of one Polish movie with sabre duel [forgot the name but you'll find it quickly] there are usually fanmade clips and the one anime.

3 hours ago
#6

Offline
Jan 2021
1610
It depends on the movie. A movie that wants me to take it seriously or is about a historical tragedy (e.g., Holocaust movies) has the responsibility to get the major details right.
31 minutes ago
#7
🍅 Tomato 🍅

Offline
Feb 2020
98749
"Do you care about historical accuracy when watching a movie?"

Very rarely.
26 minutes ago
#8

Offline
Mar 2013
3279
I feel like a ton of media about Rome tend to glorify it and not enough really focuses on the absolute atrocity. Even Gladiator kind of skirts this line. Real talk though, I am technically a Southerner by birthright. Was born in the Capital of the Confederacy, though Virginia is pretty purple to be honesty. I really hate neo-confederate drivel and the like, and I do think films like Gods and General should absolutely be criticized for not being historically accurate.

There's a difference for me between Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Birth of a Nation. There is merely taking place in a time period in a given place, and then there is failing to reckon with that time period in a movie that sells itself as history while obfuscating the tragedies and omitting the atrocities.
Auroraloose's Aurorasimp

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